


Lucky man

by samchandler1986



Category: GLOW (TV 2017)
Genre: Baby Fic, Childbirth, Complications, Fictober 2019, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-11-28 17:22:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20970242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samchandler1986/pseuds/samchandler1986
Summary: Fictober prompt 35: "I'm with you, you know that."[Sam wanted to be there for Ruth in the hospital, but circumstances intervene.]





	Lucky man

The waiting room of hell has old fashioned floor tiles, the colour of faded limes, and hard-backed plastic chairs. He sits in one of them, head down, folded hands dangling between his knees. He was watching the clock, but the hands have slowed to an unbearable crawl. When he glances back up, what feels like an ice age later, he finds it’s still only twenty-three minutes past midnight. 

Twenty-three minutes since they’ve left him in here. Alone.

_“Stay with me?”_

_She reaches for him, fingers bloody, and he takes her hand as they scream through the Hollywood night. Berry red is smudged over bone white. He could tell himself it’s the hard light in the back of the ambulance that’s turned her so pale, but what’s the point in the lie?_

_He squeezes her hand instead. “Yeah,” he says, softly. Trying to keep it together for her sake. “I’m with you. You know that.”_

Except he isn’t.

_“I’m sorry, sir, you can’t come inside the OR.”_

_“C’mon, please, that’s my wife—!”_

_“I know, sir, but it’s not safe for you to be in there. If you can just come with me? I promise we’ll let you know as soon as anything changes…”_

Maybe he should have fought harder. Laid out the goddamn orderly and just run on through. But there’s a part of him that knows now there’s fuck all he can do. Everything is in the hands of the surgeons. All that’s left for him to do is sit here; skull filled with static. Not a thought in his brain beyond _please, please, please_, and the weight of his terror pressing down on his chest…

There is a spatter of blood on the sleeve of his shirt. They’ve left rather more of it behind. On the bed sheets, the bedroom carpet. Fuck, for a moment, bleary on waking, he’d thought he was back on _set_. But there’s that iron tang to the real stuff, and an eerie calm about her when she spoke, that set his limbs shaking. 

_“Sam, you need to call an ambulance.”_

_“Yeah, I_ _—”_

_“Now.”_

Bile, in the back of his throat; shame sick. Because he should have reacted quicker. They were warned, weren’t they? Words he didn’t want to understand, photocopied to fuck. They headlined a folded leaflet heralding the first chill wind of uncertainty in what had been, up until then, a miraculously easy pregnancy.

_Placenta previa. Risk factors include: mother is over thirty five, previous caesarean sections or terminations, cocaine use, smoking._

_“I guess between us we’ve got almost the whole fucking list, right?” he jokes, when they’re left alone in the doctor’s office for a moment._

_“Yeah,” she says, swallowing. Face a mask. Fuck._

_“Hey, hey. Look at me. It’ll be okay, Ruth. I promise.” He puts his arm around her, presses a kiss to her cheek. “You’re just going to have to do what they say about taking it easy, you know?” _

_A bubbling laugh, half a sob. “Yeah, that’s – that’s the tricky part.”_

_“I know, I know.” _

_She hates feeling useless; has struggled with the fussing kindness of friends and strangers ever since the swell of stomach has grown beyond what she can hide in a baggy sweater. _

_“I mean, there’s still a tonne of script editing that needs—”_

_“Sam! I—” On the edge of hysteria, she gropes for the words. “Did I do this? Is this my fault for—?“_

_“No! Christ, Ruth. It’s just… bad fucking luck, alright?” _

Luck he’d thought was holding, as they crept up and over that thirty-six week boundary line. Reassured by the sonographer that in ninety percent of cases like theirs, the situation works itself out for the best…

And now here they are, the unlucky ten percent. 

He looks up at the click of shoes in the corridor. Not the soft tread of a nurse in plimsolls, but maybe a doctor’s brogue. His stomach clenches as the door opens—

And he blinks to find it’s Justine. “Hi,” she says. “I got your message when I got back to my dorm. Thought I should probably bring this to you.” She indicates the neatly packed holdall in her hand, a hospital bag that Ruth has had ready for a month.

“Thanks,” he manages. There are things in there he can’t think about right now, soft and small—

“I…cleaned up, too.”

“What?”

“The bedsheets?” she winces. “And the carpet… I just didn’t think you’d want to come home to all of that.”

“Jesus. You didn’t have to—” he starts, and stops himself. “Thanks.”

She shrugs, taking a seat next to him. “It’s fine. Do you want company or…?”

“Stay,” he says, finding her hand. “I’d appreciate it.” 

She returns the pressure, white knuckled for a moment, and then lets him go. Correctly calling he’d like a distraction from his current misery rather than further questioning. “So, I got an A on that paper for Dr Hilderstrom…”

He frowns, thinking difficult through the panicky static. But it’s almost a _relief_ to turn his brain to her college professors and student life. “She’s… uh, Italian Noir cinema, right?” 

“Yup.”

“Well, no shit.”

“I mean, she still hates me—”

“—because you’ve sold more fucking scripts than she has.”

“I don’t know…” 

“Trust me.”

* * *

Two am finds Justine asleep across several of the plastic chair, his jacket a pillow under her head. It’s a feat he would have thought impossible, given what the hard plastic has done to his back, but there you fucking go…

He is watching the moon through the window; a thin crescent high and cold in the sky. It can’t be good, he thinks, at this point. He’s offered himself up in silent trade to whatever deity might happen to be listening; raged at the unfairness of it all—

_(but is it, really? He’s been so fucking lucky to have her in his life at all. This fairytale ending was never something a man like him deserved—)_

Now he thinks he’s reaching the acceptance part of his accelerated course of the five stages of grief. If she is gone, what half-life is left for him to live? He’ll have to hold it together long enough for Justine to finish college, he thinks. Six months then, and what? Break sobriety and mainline an eight-ball until his heart goes pop?

“Mr Sylvia?”

His aforementioned heart leaps into his throat as he turns to the speaker. A nurse in the doorframe, _smiling_ at him, of all things. Justine stirs, rubbing sleepy eyes, as she continues. “They’re ready to see you now.”

“Right,” he hears himself say, his head a balloon barely tethered to the ground by his heavy feet. “Do you want to—?” he starts.

His daughter shakes her head. “I’ll come in a few minutes,” she says. “Go.”

He shuffles across the tiles after the nurse and down a corridor. Knowing he’s on the edge of something immeasurable; that this is the last few seconds of his life _before. _Of course, he’s known what’s coming _logically_, but it’s different to confronting the visceral reality of an actual fucking baby. He’s felt a glimmer of it when he painted the nursery; a stronger sense whenever Ruth took his hand to feel the kicks inside her. Now it’s here and— 

And she’s sitting up in bed, dark circles under her eyes, but smiling.

“Hi,” he says, stupidly. “How are you doing?”

“We’re both going to be fine,” she says. Voice a little ragged with tired and pain, but face shining with joy. “Do you want to say hello?”

He comes to join her and the little bundle in her arms. Pressing a kiss into her hair as he leans in to see for the first time this… _life_ they’ve somehow made together. 

“Oh,” he says, involuntary, as she passes him the baby. His baby. Their baby. Because somehow, he was expecting it to look like… well, every other fucking baby. Sort of pink and old-mannish. He’s not met that many to attempt much description beyond that. But in his arms instead is him and her together; the jawline he regretfully shaves in the mirror; a version in miniature of her elfin ears…

He is lost for a minute in the little composite face. When he looks up, Ruth is smiling at them both, stupid happy. Mirroring a grin he knows is pasted across his own face. “Is it, uh, a girl or—?”

“He’s a boy, Sam,” she says. “He’s… he’s our son.”

“Fuck,” he breathes. Laughing, crying, as she does the same. “I, um, I don’t think he looks much like an August,” he manages eventually, handing him back and squeezing next to them on the bed. They’ve not settled on a name before now.

“No,” she agrees. “I’ve been thinking he’s maybe more of an… Antonio?” 

“Antonio.” It’s a good Italian name, after all. “Yeah,” he agrees, threading his arm around them both. “I think you could be right.”


End file.
